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Pre-Fork Trading for Upcoming Bitcoin Cash Hard Fork

Modified on: Thu, 15 Nov, 2018 at 4:04 PM

In Bitcoin ABC's roadmap for 2018, two planned protocol upgrades were announced for May and November. For the upcoming November 15th upgrade, two competing development teams have proposed different network consensus rules that are incompatible with each other: the “SV” implementation and the “ABC” implementation.

We believe the responsible thing for an exchange to do is remain neutral, and we want to empower the community to demonstrate their support through trading activity. Therefore, starting on November 7th, 2018, Poloniex is offering customers the option to trade two tokens at the center of the debate about the pending Bitcoin Cash (BCH) hard fork: Bitcoin Cash ABC (BCHABC) and Bitcoin Cash SV (BCHSV), prior to the November 15 fork.

Pre-fork trading is available immediately for the following pairs: BCHSV/USDC, BCHABC/USDC, BCHSV/BTC, and BCHABC/BTC. We are also opening up a BCH/USDC market. Customers can convert Bitcoin Cash into equivalent amounts of BCHABC and BCHSV, and also convert SV and ABC back into BCH if they’d like to withdraw funds. Customers can trade immediately, but won’t be able to withdraw BCHABC and BCHSV ahead of the hard fork.

You can find the conversion tool in the upper righthand corner of our trading platform:

On November 15, 2018, we will pause BCH deposits and withdrawals at 14:00 UTC. At 15:00 UTC, we will freeze the BCH market, cancel all outstanding orders, and take a snapshot. Customers who still hold BCH at this time will immediately receive an equivalent amount of BCHABC and BCHSV. We will then disable the BCH market (as all balances will be zero).

We will begin allowing withdrawals on both chains once they stabilize. We are aware that there is not currently chain-wide replay protection; we have implemented our own replay protection and are able to broadcast replay-protected withdrawals on individual chains.

Please ensure that all your transactions are completed prior to the pause. We will make an announcement and re-enable deposits and withdrawals as soon as the networks stabilize. Your tokens will be safely stored during the pause, and there is nothing for you to do at this time if you don’t want to participate in pre-fork trading.

You do not have to engage in pre-fork trading. If you choose to engage in pre-fork trading, please note that, as with all trading on the platform, trading in these assets can be extremely risky, and you trade at your own risk. It is possible that one of these chains will not be economically or technically viable after the fork, and its value will drop to zero. In addition to these considerations, please note that the Poloniex User Agreement covers all activity on Poloniex.